Testament: The Bible and history - John Romer

The Bible has had more influence upon Western civilization than any other book. So splendid are its phrases that many have taken them to be the unmediated word of God. Since its texts were gathered together the book has been venerated and enshrined, execrated and burned. But whether we are believers or not the Bible still remains our heritage, the linchpin of modern civilization. It has provided the West with a sense of the sacred and our sense of historical destiny.

Testament describes the making of the Bible, the creation of both the Old and the New Testaments and charts the book's survival through the long centuries of its life. Testament is a unique book: no other single volume tells the story of the Bible’s extraordinary journey from the ancient East to the heart of the modern West.

John Romer uses his considerable experience of the worlds of art history and archaeology to advantage as he unravels the story of the making and the use and misuse of the world's most beautiful and influential book. With a sure touch he sets the historical scene and brings to vivid life the Bible’s creators.

From the silty plains of Mesopotamia on whose floods many Noahs set sail, to the quiet Valley of the Nile where somber temples were filled with a sense of the holy, Romer traces the seeds of Judaism and Christianity. He describes in lively detail how the Bible was written and by whose hands. The scope of Testament is enormous and fascinating, stretching as it does from the ancient Israelites to the archaeologists who came in search of them. Its characters include the Rabbis who fought and died for their sacred books; Jesus of Nazareth, whose preachings inspired St Paul and whose life and death became the cornerstone of the Church; Constantine, who formalized the faith and established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire; Irenaeus, who classified the holy scriptures; fiery Jerome, who translated them, and later, Martin Luther and King James. These are just a few of the people who held the thread of the Bible’s story in their hands. Testament tells all their stories and ours.